


That Other Stuff

by tjs_whatnot



Category: Firefly
Genre: 5 Times, F/M, shameful amount of fade to black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9612137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: Four Times Mal and Kaylee Engaged in Off-Ship Shenanigans and One Time They Didn't





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Newt (Major)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/gifts).



**~1~**

“ _Ung Jeong Jia Ching Jien Soh_!”

“You kiss your mama with that mouth, Kaylee?”

“We’re stuck here on this godforsaken rock and you’re giving me a chuckle and a cliché?”

“Only one of those things are true.”

Kaylee paused and rethought her last sentence. “That was _definitely_ a cliché.”

“Yes, but we are _not_ stuck here. And I _never_ chuckle.” 

“What are you talking about? Mal, Jayne left us here. Got in the shuttle and flew away. No one knows where we are. No one’s coming to get us.”

“All part of the plan.”

“There’s a plan? You have a plan that requires Jayne to go out of his mind?”

“All my plans require Jayne to go out of his mind. It makes it easier as he’s already there. We work with what we got.”

“And what exactly have we got?”

“We’ve got the second shuttle a safe distance away, we’ve got a fair amount of rations, and—will you look at that—we’re both fully clothed, which is a fair better outcome than one of my previous plans, if you remember.”

“Oh, I do remember. Fondly.” She smirked. “So, there’s a rescue mission in the works?”

“That there is.”

“And how long before they get here?” She walked towards him. Standing within inches and way too close for polite, friendly-like conversation.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked after he swallowed.

“Well, just because we’re fully clothed now doesn’t mean we have to stay that way.”

**~2~**

“Stop hogging the covers!” Kaylee said through her teeth as she tugged at the little corner of blanket she still had left.

“You said you weren’t cold.”

“That was before. I wasn’t cold before.”

“And I was supposed to know this because?” Mal asked.

Kaylee put her bare foot against Mal’s calves. He jumped.

“See?” she said. “Downright frigid wouldn’t you say?”

“Here,” Mal said, relinquishing a fair bit of his blankets. “I told you we should have gotten double beds.”

“Oh yeah, that would look good. Us playing the part of newly marrieds and needing separate beds.”

“Fair enough. I’ve just never shared my bed—real or fictitiously—I don’t know that I’m going to be any good at it.”

“Never? You’ve _never_ shared your bed with someone?”

“Not to sleep, no. Plenty of that other stuff though.”

Kaylee smiled. “I’m sure.”

What about you?” Mal asked, smiling slow, feeling her feet on his, not so cold now.

“Oh, you know me, I’m a big fan of that _other_ stuff.”

“That’s not what I meant, but I do, in fact, know that.”

“Hey!” She punched his arm.

“I wasn’t sayin’ it’s a bad thing.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I happen to think it’s a very good thing. Just, you never shared your bed? Never wanted to?”

“I did. Once. When I was a kid really, ran away with the first boy who ever told me I was pretty. I was sixteen and thought we would set up a house and live happily ever after.”

“How long was your happily ever after?”

She laughed. “A week and a half.”

“A lifetime when you’re sixteen. Did it end badly?”

“Nah, my daddy found us and dragged me out of there. But it was okay, I was already bored anyway.”

“You get bored easily do you?” he asked, pushing her hair away from her forehead.

She ran her foot up his leg, draping her leg around his hip. “We'll just have to see, won’t we?”

**~3~**

“Mal!” Kaylee screamed as she reached for him, trying to catch him before he fell to the ground in a heap. As she wrapped her hands precariously around his arms and fell to the ground with him, she scanned the area frantically to see where the gunfire had come from. She couldn’t see anything, so she dragged him to the only place she was sure it hadn’t—behind them.

There was an opening to a cave and she pulled him into it, not even entertaining the idea that it could very well be a corpse she was protecting, knowing either way, she would never leave him out there. Once they were secured inside its protection, she released him and shouldered off her rucksack, reaching for the two grenades Jayne had insisted she bring along with them. Mal had been mad at him when he’d given them to her, saying he was scaring her unnecessarily. Mal said it was just a supply rendezvous and if it were in anyway dangerous, he wouldn’t be taking her.

“Sure you wouldn’t be,” Jayne had drawled through the toothpick in his mouth as he had walked away with a smirk.

“He knows,” Kaylee had said, zipping one of the bags they would be transporting on planet. 

Mal had shrugged. “He doesn’t _know_ , he _suspects_. He couldn’t know unless he’d caught us in the act, and—”

“Since we’ve never done anything on the ship…”

“Exactly. He suspects.” He had tossed the packed bags onto the trailer of the ATV. “Besides, would it be so bad if people knew?”

Kaylee had blushed. “It’s nobody else’s business.”

Mal had wanted to say something; she had sensed that, but she’d gotten on the ATV behind him, wrapped her arms tight around him and he hadn’t. Instead he’d just started the engine and drove them away. Where they could be alone.

And three hours later, they were alone, and he had been shot and she waited for whoever had done it to come for her. She searched for where he’d been hit. It didn’t take long to figure it out. 

His shoulder was a bloody mess and it had gotten all over her when she had caught his fall and dragged him to safety. She took a deep breath to steady herself and fight the panic that was rising to the surface. 

“Oh Mal, Mal, Mal,” she chanted as she took a breath and tore his shirt open. She felt her stomach roll as she saw the open wound, the skin split and oozing blood. “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?”

She heard footsteps outside the cave and she instantly stopped her chant and clutched a grenade, getting up slow and quiet and inching to the mouth of the cave. She was shaking and she couldn’t stop it. Some of it was terror, part was adrenaline, but part was the idea that she might have to kill someone. She knew, the life they lived, the things they did to survive sometimes (okay, almost always) led to some sort of danger, and sometimes (never for her, but a lot for others) led to violence and killing. She’d rather fix things than destroy them.

“Kay...lee…” Mal stuttered weakly.

The panic rose to the surface. She couldn’t fix him, and she couldn’t kill the other, but she might have to do both. She took a deep breath. Pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it as far out of the cave as she could, hoping to warn, not kill.

“I got more where that came from!” she shouted after the explosion dissipated. “Everything we have is on that ATV, take it and go.”

She didn’t wait to see if the assailant would do what she suggested and ran back to Mal. She knelt beside him, pulling his sidearm out of its holster and laying it beside her before leaning over him. She stroked his sweat-soaked forehead. 

He smiled, but she saw the pain in it and understood that the smile was for her.

“I’ve officially been shot more as a civilian than I ever was as a soldier during the war,” he said with a laugh that sounded painful.

She leaned her forehead against his. “That’s not funny.”

He coughed. “Oh come on, it was a little bit funny.”

“Mal, what do I do?”

“First, we check to see just how bad this new wound is, then we check to see if the piece of shit who shot me took your advice and left.”

“And if he didn’t?”

“We’ll just worry about that when the time comes, yes? You have my gun ready? Just in case?”

“Yes. Though, you know how ill-equipped I am at using it, right?”

He smiled fondly. “I do. But, as I’ve been shot in the shoulder connected to my arm, which is connected to my shooting hand, you might, for this one time only, be better equipped than me.”

She rubbed her forehead against his in protest. He reached his hand, connected to his good shoulder between them and wrapped his fingers around her neck, stopped her with his thumb on her chin. “Hey, hey, last resort Kaylee, absolute last resort.”

He kissed her and she instantly felt better. Sighing, she nodded her head. “Okay. What first?”

“Take off my clothes,” he answered.

“Mal.”

He laughed. “My shirt I mean. To see the damage, to make a bandage.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Kaylee did what she was told trying not to disturb him. “I thought you were being fresh.”

“I wish. I’m all out of fresh.”

“Mal, this looks bad,” she whispered. There was blood everywhere.

“Nah, shoulder wounds always look worse than they are. We just need to wash away the blood to see it better and make sure the bullet went through and isn’t still in there.”

She nodded and swallowed her bile at the thought. She took a deep breath and cleaned the wound before looking. “It looks like it went through? Oh man, I wish Simon was here.”

“Really? Don’t you think he’d maybe cramp our style, with, you know… that other stuff?” 

Kaylee just blushed. “Or, is that something you’d want?”

“What?” Kaylee asked. Pulling him back to look him in the eye. Mal flinched in pain. “What do you mean?”

“You want Simon…”

“Want him? Want him here, right now? Yes. He’s a _doctor_ , you know.”

“But… not for that… other stuff?”

“Cap, sweetie, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think they’ll be any of that other stuff happening, not on this trip.”

Mal let out a sob that frightened Kaylee more than anything else had. “Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” 

“Oh Mal, it’s okay. I mean yeah, I do like that other stuff but—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Not that. I should have… should have never been taking you on these trips… there’s always risks, always dangers… I’ve been selfish… just wanted...wanted…”

“Wanted what?” she asked.

“You.”

She bit her lip, putting her hands on both sides of his face. “Yeah?”

“Did you ever doubt it?”

She shook her head slowly. “And did you ever doubt that it was my choice to come with you on these adventures? That I make up my own mind, that I know the risks and choose to come anyway?”

“Even now?”

She kissed him, then began wrapping strips of his torn shirt around his newest wound. “Even now.”

**~4~**

“You didn’t have to come with me you know?” Kaylee stated again as they disconnected the shuttle from Serenity. “I do know how to fly the shuttle myself.”

“I know that.”

“But you don’t trust me?”

“What? No. I trust you with the shuttle, hell, I’ve trusted you with the only thing that’s ever meant anything to me—”

“Your heart? Aw, Mal—”

Mal rolled his eyes. “Serenity, dum-dum.”

She smiled. “Your heart, Serenity, same thing really.” 

“And I trust you with both.”

“Okay, then why are you coming with me? Wait, you don’t trust me to come back, do you?”

“That’s not it at all,” he started.

“Then explain it. Explain why the captain of a ship of misfits and ne’er-do-wells would abandon their ship to accompany one of their crew to a visit home.”

“ _One of their crew_? Really, Kaylee? After all this time?” She didn’t respond, just looked out the window as the stars zooming by. “Maybe I’m coming because I want you to have options.”

“Options?”

“If you went by yourself, you’d _have_ to come back. You’d have to return the shuttle if nothing else. If I bring you, you have options.”

She studied him for a long time. “Malcolm Reynolds, what is going on in that head of yours?”

“What? I know you like options, it’s why we’re only…”

She waved her hands to stop him when she didn’t have the words to counter him. Not just then.

He waited. 

“You think I don’t want anyone to know about what we get up to while off the ship because I’m _weighing my options_?”

He still didn’t take his eyes off the window, but he shrugged. “Maybe? I mean, I get it, you have them, options I mean. And good ones… or really one good one, and one sort of okay one and one not good at all one, but still… a doctor, me and a psychopath, those are options for you.”

She huffed. “Not to mention, I could always leave. Go home, go anywhere really. My options are limitless.”

Mal swallowed. “Exactly.” 

“And, you want to know how someone who could go anywhere, could have anyone would chose Serenity, would chose you?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t take his eyes off the sky flying by them. She just let him stew for a minute before she took his chin and pulled his head to look at her. 

“Oh Mal, don’t you know by now? There are no options. That I have no choice.”

He swallowed. “You don’t?”

“No, dum-dum, you don’t choose who and what you love. You just do.”

“And you… you love… me?”

“And Serenity. And I’m sorry that my not proclaiming it to the world, that my wanting this one thing to be mine alone made you doubt yourself, made you doubt me.”

He reached over and kissed her, wrapping his arms around her. “You love me,” he said, awed.  
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not that big of a deal. You love me too, you know.”

He pulled her onto his lap. “I do, do I?”

“Yep.” She kissed him. “And you are hurdling through space as we speak to go and meet my parents.”

He swallowed again. “Oh man, I never thought about that… is it too late to turn this ship around?”

“Nope. But relax. They’re going to love you.”

“Sure they are. The guy who took their daughter away, who puts her in danger on a daily basis, who turned her into a scavenger and thief.”

“Well, if it’s alright with you, let’s keep those bits out of the introductions, yes?”

“Sounds like a plan,” he agreed as he reached behind her and put the shuttle on auto-pilot before kissing his way down her neck.

**~5~**

“I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” Kaylee said, rubbing her hands along the smooth silk of the dress she was wearing. She was borrowing it from Inara and was in her shuttle letting Inara do her hair and makeup. She’d never felt more beautiful, or more nervous.

“Well, because now it’s real. Before, when it was off-ship fun and games, there were no consequences, no thought of how it affected your everyday life. But now it’s different. It’s in the open, it’s all day every day.”

Kaylee looked at her in the mirror. “You’re okay with this, right?”

“Sweetie, I’ve told you, I’m _overjoyed_ for you… for you both. I love the two of you, and the idea of you making each other happy it just… it makes me happy.”

Kaylee was just going to take that at face value. She’d always thought there had been some _thing_ between her and Mal, but he’d seemed oblivious to it when she’d mentioned it when they’d first started messin’ around and Inara really did look happy for them. And she _was_ letting her borrow one of her most slinky dresses. She wouldn’t have offered that if she wasn’t okay, right?

“Kaylee, you look so beautiful.”

Kaylee turned her eyes from Inara’s reflection and focused on hers instead. She barely recognized herself. Then she smiled shyly and she was back, a little girl in her mother’s makeup and costume jewelry. 

Inara took her hand and led her out of the shuttle and across the walkway to the other one where Mal was waiting, looking just as dressed up and foreign, just as ill-at-ease and anxious.

“Hey,” she said, looking down. She watched him kick the air around them with his foot. 

“Hey.”

Inara just laughed and walked away.

“Ready?” Kaylee asked.

“I am.” He went to turn, but stopped, holding his arm out to indicate he remembered to be a gentleman. “You look very beautiful.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “So do you… handsome I mean.”

He smiled. “You don’t think these pants are too tight?”

She turned and looked at him. “I like them tight, you know that.”

Now he laughed. “This I like. This talking and flirting.”

“Us being us? Not the Inara and…” she looked at him again, “Is that Simon’s clothes.”

“What? He’s got the fancy things. We’re going to a fancy place.”

“Why again?”

They got to the shuttle and Mal opened the door for her. “To celebrate our newly improved relationship.”

“So, we’re going off the ship to celebrate the fact that we decided to bring our relationship _onto_ the ship?”

He scratched his head and then shrugged. “It made more sense in my head.”

“Well, I think it will be a very fine time.”

They were only an hour into their trip when the shuttle started shaking, started sputtering.

 

“Kaylee, why is my shuttle doing that?”

“I don’t know. She was working fine last time I tuned her up.”

“And when was that?”

She tried to remember.

“Kaylee!”

“Hey, you know how it is, you got so many things pinging and falling off on Serenity, you forget about things that are running smoothly… until they ain’t.”

“Well, I think we’re about to run right into the ain’t category.”

She stood up. “I’ll see what I can do, but shuttles aren’t like ships. Most of their mechanics are outside.”

“So, I should be looking for a place to land?”

“Not just yet. But maybe somewhere to hover over just in case.”

She disappeared. 

After waiting for over an hour, Mal found a not overly hostile, but not nearly as shiny rock as the one they had been heading to hover over, and went to look for Kaylee. She was reaching around the parts of the engine she could get to while swearing profusely. 

“That bad?” Mal asked.

“Not too bad. We won’t blow up, so there’s that. Just more a nuisance that I should have tended   
to before it left Serenity.”

“And will we get to Sihnon?”

She straightened up and looked at him, her hair was a bit messier than before and there was smudges of grease on her cheeks and along the bridge of her nose. She had the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

“We could, it will just take longer than we’d anticipated.” She took a deep breath. “Oh Mal, I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey, why? What for?” he asked, reaching up and wiping at the grease and tears running down her cheeks. 

She rubbed angrily at the other and then groaned when she saw that her fingers were grease stained and her mascara was running. She turned away from him and continued to wipe her face. “I should have been working on the shuttle more and on myself and this stupid hair and makeup business less. This isn’t who I am. Why was I trying so hard?”

He wrapped his arms around her. “I honestly have no idea. But if you did any of it because you thought you had to, then let me dispel you of that notion right now.”

She shook her head. “I know I didn’t _have_ to. I know you don’t care about that stuff, it’s one of the things I like the most about you. I don’t know…” She shrugged. “I just wanted to… to know I could.”

“Well, you definitely _can_ , but honestly, do you want to? I mean, why do you wear the things you wear and not things like these?” he asked, running her hands down the smooth of the material covering her hips.

“Well besides the cost?” She shrugged again. “It’s impractical and not altogether comfortable.”

“So, the clothes you wear, the way you wear your hair is like a uniform for the job you want, the life you want?”

“Yeah?” she agreed slowly, trying to see what point he was trying to make.

“I imagine it’s the same for Inara. All these frilly, impractical things are her uniform for the life she leads and she would feel just as out of place in overalls and ponytails.”

Kaylee laughed at the very idea. 

“Doesn’t make either of you _less_ than. You just have different—and equally important jobs—different but equally important lives.” 

“And you’re okay with overalls and ponytails?”

He squeezed her tight.”Well, I think the overalls would work, but I would look _terrible_ in ponytails.”

She elbowed him, but he just laughed.

“Where is this even coming from? Have I ever given any indication that I want you to be anything but the grease monkey that you are?”

She bowed her head. “Well, no. But that was before. When we were just messin’ around.”

He turned her around so he could look at her. “You know that makes no sense, right?”

She sighed. “In my own defense, yes I do. But, I hate to tell you, but this is what you get, this is what your life will be now—indecision and insecurity. You think you can handle it?”  
He thought for a moment. “Only if after I get to ridicule you mercilessly.”

“Only after,” she said, reaching up and wrapping her hands behind his neck. “But what about you? What delights shall I expect from our new shiny?”

He put his hands on her hips and the too slick material of the dress covering them and began slowly swaying them around the engine room. “Me? I’m a peach. A real low-maintenance catch. Oh sure, sometimes my insecurities will manifest themselves in bouts of jealousy. And yes, there will be times when my desire to keep you safe could possibly be perceived as demeaning your strength and expertise. But, I give you permission right here and now to smack me about the face when I begin to display these behaviors.”

She smiled. “Only about the face? What if I happen to like that face just the way it is?”

He smiled too. “Oh, maybe we could think of some other punishments.”

“I’m sure we could. If we put our heads together.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. 

He went to pick her up, but his hands couldn’t find purchase on the silk of the dress and when he finally did by cupping her ass and lifting, she couldn’t wrap her legs around him because of the length and tightness of the dress.

She growled and pushed him away for a minute so she could shimmy out of the dress. She instantly felt better, free, herself again. She was back in his arms moments later, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips, her mouth crushed against his.

“Right here in the engine room?” he asked when he broke the kiss. “Brings me back.”

“Back?” she asked.

“To the day we met.”

She thought for a moment and then buried her face in his shoulder, blushing profusely. “I can’t believe you remembered that!”

“Kind of hard to forget, darling.”

“Please try.”

“Well, we got two options,” Mal started, taking her hand. “We can either make our own memories there under that engine.”

“Or?” she asked.

“Or we get out of here and get somewhere we can make all new ones.”

“Where should we go?”

He walked them out of the room. “Home.”

“Yeah? No fancy dinners? No dancing?”

They walked to the cockpit, Kaylee picked up and threw the dress over his shoulder.

“We can dance as we fly to Serenity, and maybe, if we play our cards right, Jayne will bring us some breakfast in bed.”

Kaylee shivered. “I’ve had nightmares about that.”

Mal smiled. “Okay, no Jayne, no breakfast.”

“But definitely bed.”

“Most definitely. And this time, I’ll even share the blankets.”

“See, learning already.”


End file.
